Hocus Pocus 3

Hocus Pocus 2Photo: Disney+/Matt Kennedy

A confession: Upon finishing last year’s long-delayed spooky season fantasy sequel Hocus Pocus 2, we did not find ourselves overly concerned with its wide-ranging and sweeping implications for Hocus Pocus lore. Sure, it was nice to see Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and King Of The Hill favorite Kathy Najimy running amuck (amuck, amuck) together for the first time in decades, but the film’s efforts to construct a wider Hocus Pocus mythos to build a whole franchise on—centered on some ominous cameos by Ted Lasso’s Hannah Waddingham as the “Mother Witch” who gave Winifred Sanderson her magic powers back in the old days—didn’t feel like a narrative we needed to spend much mind on moving forward.

Tony Hale talks “Veep”, “Arrested Development”, and more

But, then, that is presumably what separates us from, say, Jen D’Angelo, the writer of Hocus Pocus 2, and who has now—now that the WGA writers strike is over—made it clear that the already-promised Hocus Pocus 3 is well on its way toward answering all these black flame candle-based burning questions, promising that its already announced sequel, while still in the story phase, is trucking along, and that “We’ve only scratched the surface of Hannah Waddingham’s mother witch.”

D’Angelo was fielding questions from Entertainment Weekly about the sequel, which was announced in the midst of a much longer New York Times piece on Disney+’s fortunes back in June of this year, after pretty much everybody involved—including, critically, Midler—unofficially acknowledged that, yeah, they’d do another one of these things. That includes D’Angelo and returning director Anna Fletcher (the only people who appear to be formally attached to the third movie), plus new stars like Belissa Escobedo and Lilia Buckingham, who drew praise for their performances in HP2. It’s still not clear what form the third movie would take, including, presumably, for D’Angelo, who made it clear that the team is exploring different directions the story could go. All the Waddingham stuff suggests the franchise will be diving into more of the “young witches”/prequel stuff—but D’Angelo was careful to note that “we for sure want to see [the Sandersons] again as adults,” adding that she’s “hoping that we are able to explore every aspect of these stories and take these characters on a bunch of fun adventures.”